Today's Liberal News

“Reinfection Wave”: Ed Yong on BA.5 Omicron Variant Spread Amid Mask Mandate Rollbacks, Funding Cuts

COVID-19 cases are rising as the BA.5 Omicron variant puts more people in the hospital amid high rates of reinfection, which is the focus of a new piece by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ed Yong in The Atlantic that is headlined “Is BA.5 the ‘Reinfection Wave’?” Yong warns the premature rollback of protective policies, like mask mandates and public health funding, has left people more vulnerable to reinfection.

“Shameful”: Biden’s Trip to Saudi Arabia for More Oil Ignores Human Rights Abuses, Khashoggi Murder

President Biden is set to meet with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Friday as part of a four-day visit to restore key relationships and build security cooperation in the Middle East. Human rights activists are outraged that the U.S. is willing to support a leader responsible for human rights violations including in the brutal war in Yemen, the state-sanctioned killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and more.

Good vibes only! Fox News guest complains of having to hear about slavery during Monticello tour

One of the many museums dedicated to American history is Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate. This was the estate designed by Thomas Jefferson, built and worked by African American slaves. Monticello is one of the most famous slave plantations because it was home to one of the “Founding Fathers,” and a very important and powerful American historical figure. About half a million people visit the 5,000 acre Monticello every year in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Ukraine update: Data shows Russia lying about advances in east, but Kherson situation looks worse

By now I think everyone is tired of looking at maps of the Kherson area in which few things seem to change from day to day. So you may be excited to see that the map has changed today. Until you see that none of those changes is for the good.

Kherson area update reverts much of the ‘disputed’ area to Russian control.

It’s not that Russia has conducted a major offensive, or even that a number of past calls turned out to be wrong.

After ticket violation, Texas mother argues her unborn baby should count as passenger in HOV lane

A pregnant woman has gone viral on social media after receiving a ticket for driving in the HOV lane. Brandy Bottone was pulled over after an officer noticed she was driving alone in the HOV lane meant for carpoolers. When questioned, Bottone replied that following the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, her fetus now qualified as another person. Her story quickly went viral, with scores of people both praising and criticizing her actions.

They came for Roe. Now, one right-wing lawyer is coming for PrEP, the medicine that prevents HIV

As most of us have figured out by now, the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was likely just the beginning. If the court can reverse the hands of time on millions of Americans and their much-needed reproductive health care, they obviously have zero issue with reversing same-sex or interracial marriage, taking away contraception, or even the ability to get lifesaving medicine.

According to The Advocate, a conservative attorney in Texas is a prime example.

The Shame of the Secret Service

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.When people say the Secret Service’s job is to protect the president, they usually mean it in a physical way—not a political one.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

Joe Manchin’s Fickleness Is a Needless Catastrophe

For its many flaws, the world of cryptocurrency has bequeathed to the English language a vivid new verb: rug-pulling. As its idiom-derived name suggests, rug-pulling is when a crypto developer hypes up a new coin or new project, gets ordinary people to invest in it, and then—all at once—shuts it down in such a way that they take all of their investors’ cash with them.

It’s Joe Manchin’s America

On March 6, 2021, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia delivered the decisive 50th Democratic vote to help pass President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. The stimulus package provided relief checks to most American families, expanded a child tax credit to combat poverty, and bolstered federal support to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

Seriously, What’s Making All These Mysterious Space Signals?

Astronomy can be, in some ways, a bit like the classic board game Clue. Scientists explore a sprawling but ultimately contained world, collecting pieces of information and testing out theories about a big mystery. You can’t cover every corner, but with the right combination of strategy and luck, you can gather enough clues to make a reasonable guess at the tidy answer—who, where, and how—enclosed in a little yellow envelope at the center of it all.

The Ways We Make a Living

When they write, authors can choose to imagine fantastical worlds, or to follow the lives of celebrities or presidents. Describing the banality of the day-to-day—our relationships, the spaces we inhabit, and our jobs—can seem less glamorous and more difficult. But there’s plenty of fascinating territory to explore in writing about the workplace—including the blurry line, especially in modern times, between our personal lives and our professional ones.

James Webb’s Role in Purge of LGBTQ+ NASA Workers Prompts Push to Name Telescope After Harriet Tubman

The release of the first images from NASA’s new flagship James Webb Space Telescope brought renewed attention to the controversy over naming the telescope after James Webb, who led NASA ahead of the Apollo moon landings in the 1960s. He also played a key role in purging LGBTQ+ people from NASA in what was known as the “lavender scare,” and before that at the State Department under President Truman.

A Look Back in Time: How NASA’s Webb Telescope Gives Humanity a Revolutionary New View of Cosmos

NASA released revolutionary new images of the cosmos this week that were taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most powerful space observatory to date. Launched in 2021, the JWST was designed to study star and planet formation with exponentially more accuracy and detail than its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope. “We can actually essentially watch the formation of stars,” says astrophysicist Katie Mack.